LastFootnote

@Mariotag It’s definitely playable on Switch. I finished it (but barely touched the postgame content). The framerate is unstable and capped at 30 fps. The textures are apparently quite blurry compared to other platforms. And there are load screens every time you so much as enter a door. For a remake of an NES game, these things are somehow even more annoying to me than they’d otherwise be for a new game.

@Friendly Huh, that’s actually a great question! I think folks expect that—at minimum—the Switch 2 version will run at a solid 60 fps and display a native 1080p in handheld, which the Switch version definitely won’t. But there’s no guarantee this will actually be true.

@Colonel1000 This isn’t a press release, though. It’s a translated response from a Spanish-language interview that NintendoLife seems to have cherry-picked for the purposes of this article.

Again, this isn’t Nintendo trying to manage our expectations. It’s an answer to a question that was likely about frame drops.

@Friendly I mean, it definitely does run better. But the loading times are still annoying and it’s locked to 30 fps. I can and do play 30 fps games, but it sure would be nice if Square patched it to take advantage of the Switch 2.

Customer goodwill seems to be absent from Square-Enix’s priority list these days.

I was really looking forward to this, but given how poorly the Switch version of DQ3 runs, I guess I'll just be waiting a year or two until the Switch 2 version of this game is 50% off on the eShop. Hell if I'm buying a Game Key Card. If you want to push the cost of storage onto me, Square-Enix, I won't be paying full price for your games.

I wonder if they'll bother to make a Switch 2 version of DQ3. If they do, I'm guessing they'll probably charge full price for it with no upgrade path.

@Anachronism True, true.

Ok, played the demo again with an eye for performance, and I’m changing my tune slightly.

From what I can defect with my human eyes, there were actually no frame drops for any explosions or destruction of terrain. The frame drops I could notice were actually during general traversal in more open terrain. It isn’t ideal for sure, but I think I understand it, since it has to re-render an arbitrary terrain structure over a pretty large area.

Should they have e.g. used slightly larger voxels to further minimize these frame drops? I can at least allow for that possibility. I’m not a game dev though, so I’m not willing to condemn them quite yet.

@Antraxx777 I was also worried about this until I played the demo (and then played it again about 8 more times over the course of a few weeks). I'm not worried anymore.

You CAN destroy your way to several (but not all or even most) of the secrets in the demo area, but there's an intended way to find them as well.

I wish I could articulate better why you shouldn't worry about this, but uh I guess I'll just have to say that I think we're similar in this regard, and I think you'll be pleased with the level design. One thing I will say is that with DK's ability to climb up most surfaces, the area design feels much more exciting and interesting than e.g. Mario Odyssey's areas.

@The_Nintend_Pedant There's a sliding scale between graphical fanciness and performance, and you and I have an honest difference of opinion on where this game, and games in general, should fall on this scale. That's cool. But you are glossing over my point about player freedom here.

Tobal and F-Zero are pretty scripted in terms of what the game needs to load and when. They are nowhere NEAR as taxing as Bananza when it comes to suddenly needing to massively recalculate what the world looks like. So I think it's reasonable that I find your comparison unconvincing.

If you're truly saying that Nintendo should have made the game look like Tobal (like DK64, effectively) just so that it could avoid having any frame drops at all, then again we have a difference of opinion. That's fine, but man are you really faulting Nintendo for landing where they did on the graphics/performance spectrum here? Can you imagine the backlash if the second major Switch 2 game looked like DK64? Or even if it ran at, say, 720p? No, better for it to look great and have very occasional frame drops that almost nobody notices.

I'm also not a graphics snob. Most of the games I play are indie games. But graphics do play a role in how fun and immersive a game is. Bananza's art style and resolution are 100% part of how great it feels to play. I do think that if they'd made the game native 4K with worse performance, that would have been pretty awful. As it is, they chose what they thought was the best compromise between graphics and performance, and from what I've seen, I agree with where they landed. For what it's worth, I'm a huge "polish snob", and this game seems polished to hell and back, so I'm thrilled!

@Anachronism From what I can tell, yes Bananza's voxels are significantly smaller than Minecraft's. If you throw a bomb into the terrain, the resulting crater is more or less a cross-section of a sphere.

@The_Nintend_Pedant (Really this is a response for everybody complaining/worried about this, but you're the most recent post with a longish, well-written point.)

As someone who isn't afraid to criticize Nintendo when they screw up or let us down, I'll say with some confidence that this is all overblown. First of all, what is the context of this quote? We know it's in an interview, so probably it was in response to a specific question about frame drops. It's not like Nintendo is trying to manage everybody's expectations here. It's an answer to a question in a Spanish-language interview, not a PR statement they put out to head off criticism.

As @thedicemaster just explained, fully-destructible voxel terrain is going to be taxing on any hardware. Furthermore, any game that gives you this much freedom (Minecraft with its ability to reshape the entire world; Tears of the Kingdom with its ability to construct contraptions of very large size and complexity), also gives you the power to reduce the game's performance. My daughter was playing Minecraft in creative mode and spawned hundreds of parrots into a small area. The game slowed to a crawl and I had to explain to her why that happened. Is Minecraft a bad game because it allows this? I personally don't think so.

So here we are. Donkey Kong Bananza looks beautiful and runs at a smooth 60 fps almost all of the time. You CAN make it drop frames for a fraction of a second by destroying huge amounts of terrain at once. You seem to be making the case that either Nintendo should have either made the graphics significantly simpler or avoided this terrain-destruction mechanic altogether. I disagree! I'd much rather have the game looking beautiful and using this great world-shaping mechanic. I can handle a few frame-drops when there are massive world-altering explosions, especially when they're disguised with hitstop (which feels AWESOME, by the way). Better for the game look fantastic and run at 60 fps literally 99.9% of the time than make it look like a Switch 1 game just so they can avoid having a single frame drop.

Now maybe I'm off-base here and the actual game will somehow be a stuttering mess, but the demo runs great and is literally just a couple of the areas ripped right from the game. If the final build is actually awful, I will eat my hat. You can come here and say you told me so.

@JHDK Hey, no problem! Thanks for being awesome!

@Mana_Knight I’d take a port of Woolly World with a Switch 2 Edition and added content.

@RupeeClock I avoided Brothership due to reported long load times and performance issues. Thousand Year Door was great, though. Does sub-60 gaming make you feel ill, or do you just have a strong aversion to it?

@JHDK What? No they don’t. There’s virtually never a Nintendo presentation of any sort in July. And there hasn’t been a “Nintendo Direct” in July since the Partner Showcase in 2020.

What a weird claim to make!

@hYdeks At least they’re announcing the locations in Canada. In the US, you just have to drive around and get lucky. I’ve found it at two stores here, and one of the two is in a minor suburb I wouldn’t have expected.

@TrogdorTheBurninator I'm beginning to think the idea is not to advertise to those who already own a Switch 2. If you already have a Switch 2, there's a real good chance you're going to buy this game with or without an eShop demo.

No, they want to get it into the hands of folks who don't have a Switch 2. Give them a taste of this and Mario Kart World (the only other game with a retail demo) so they'll pick up a system when they become available.

I do not understand why Nintendo is only releasing this in “select” locations. Why not every Target store? Why only a small percentage of them?

Well the game has been rumored for years now, so it’s not too surprising.

I’m glad it’s on Switch 2, but if I didn’t have a Switch 2 myself, I might be singing a different tune.

This falls pretty flat for me, a person who didn’t think Echoes of Wisdom was very fun at all. I’m cool with asset reuse, but man the actual gameplay of Echoes just didn’t click with me. I still finished the game, but dang do I not want to replay it, maybe ever.

This game is rated M for “Blood, Nudity, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Violence”.

I’m not joking. This is on the game’s eShop page.

I hate the names of the paradox Pokémon. It's as if they couldn't be bothered to actually name these creatures and just put together some words. The fact that all the future ones are "Iron Something" is incredibly egregious.

@Dang_69 Sorry about your cat! I’ve been there.

Showtime is better than you might think, but maybe not $60 good. If it gets a 60 FPS patch AND you can get it for, say, $40, I’d give it a recommendation. But it is still pretty easy for sure.

I’m sure hoping Wonder gets a full-on Switch 2 version with lots more content. Hopefully with some more interesting bosses.

@Dang_69 Well from the demo I can’t speak to whether the game requires you to surpass major challenges, but I can attest that there are OPTIONAL challenges. I died four times on one of them.

Which recent games do you feel are too easy? I feel like Mario Wonder, Pikmin 4, and even Princess Peach Showtime were all pretty tricky to 100%. Though for Wonder and Showtime, a couple of really tough challenges were mostly responsible.

Yeah, I saw these enormous figures at Best Buy and thought, “Oh that’s why they’re $40.”

@Dr_Lugae I think Nintendo probably could have controlled it, actually. They could disallow key-cards for games that would fit within 64 GB. Heck, they could mandate that 64 GB of a game be on the cart in those cases. They could also lower the price of full game carts for third parties. Possibly they could offer smaller cart sizes (though possibly they would be no cheaper to produce, which would explain the one cart size). They’ve got lots of options.

@DaGoldenBoo Unless the game is far shorter than e.g. Super Mario Odyssey, I’m guessing DK Bananza will get a 10/10. After playing the demo (seven times over the course of the last couple weeks), I’d be shocked if it got anything lower than a 9.

That’s a weird commercial, but I’m glad the game is getting an advertising budget.

@mlt There is platforming in the game, yeah. Not every surface can be climbed, and some things are e.g. floating in the air and require you to jump to them.

@Dang_69 Maybe your definition of mindless is different than mine, but I'm guessing you don't have anything to worry about. If anything, I'd say the level design is better than in Super Mario Odyssey. You CAN bash through most of the terrain (and probably will sometimes in order to find e.g. treasure chests), but there's also a "right" way to find all the stuff, and that's great fun. And of course not every problem can be bashed through mindlessly. There are lots of challenges the require speed and finesse.

I've played the demo at a local Target about 8 times now, I think. Even in the relatively small area of the first lagoon sublevel, I found new stuff every single time I played.

@Tayrailbridge I agree with you, but at least they’re adding soundtracks faster than they’re releasing games. If they keep releasing a soundtrack (almost) every week, they will eventually catch up. It’ll take a decade or so, but it’ll happen.

Someday we’ll get Origami King. Someday.

“ Gameloft promises that the Switch 2 upgrade will mean the game will run at 6fps”

Whoa, what was its framerate before? 1fps?

I wonder why this was reposted today.

It doesn’t excuse what’s happening with Front Mission, but I actually love DKC Returns on Switch. Obviously it would be better if that multiplayer issue were fixed and if the missing visual effects were added, but overall it’s now my preferred way to play the game. If there’s input lag, it’s not enough for me to notice.

Speaking of noticeable input lag, sure would be great if Capcom would redo Mega Man Legends Collection.

@topher6490 Pretty sure it was Monster Games that messed up the Donkey Kong Country Returns multiplayer when making the 3DS version, and Forever was using that as their template for the HD version. Not that that makes Forever any good, but blame where blame is due.

@gsilver It doesn't have two spots, it's just that its rank changed between you reading the first page of the list and you reading the second page. Since this article was just posted, lots of users are going into the games' pages on NintendoLife and adding their rankings. It's updated live.

@PharoneTheGnome For what it's worth, I don't think DK Bananza is "open world" in any meaningful way. It's got big areas to explore like Super Mario 64, etc., but like, they're levels you go through in order.

@BFahey3 The Switch 2 Editions of BotW and TotK on NintendoLife were reviewed by two different people. Ollie Reynolds seems to have made the decision to dock BotW a point based on the Zelda Notes functionality. Jim Norman didn't do the same with TotK.

Personally I find Ollie's decision bizarre, but we're all entitled to our own opinions.

I think I'll stick with my digital versions, but it's very cool that these exist.

@FredBiletnikoff That’s a really good call. I bet we’ll see it happen sometime in the next two years.

I'm starting to suspect they're holding back release dates mostly so that they can reveal them in the Nintendo Today app. Hopefully they'll still save most game announcements for Nintendo Directs. (In other words, hopefully Splatoon Raiders is an anomaly.)

@rjejr What could they possibly cut out of the full game to make a demo? I mean, not to be snarky, but the game basically is a demo, in some respects. If all you can do is play 3-on-3 matches either online or against bots, how do you demo-ize that?

Reminds me of when I bought my Wii U from Target. It was the Wind Waker one, but it turned out that somebody had already used the download codes and returned the system. Of course I could only discover this after setting up my online account and trying to redeem the codes, so I already had that account using my email address tied to that Wii U. Nintendo customer support wouldn't help me, insisting that I needed to return it to the store, which wouldn't fix my account problem. Turned out having to just eat the cost of Wind Waker and forego Hyrule Historia. Thanks, Nintendo!

@somnambulance Same, but Waluigi has been growing on me, probably in large part due to BitFinity’s “Waluigi Sings” series.

@Munchlax Because it’s a toy dump truck, I assume.

@StewdaMegaManNerd Probably they wanted to avoid the blowback they were sure to receive if they tried to charge extra to make the game work.

@jetsetradion I don’t think many people EXPECTED it, but certainly they could have made it run well if they had the time and competence to do so. If Breath of the Wild can run as well as it does on Switch, Scarlet and Violet could have been far better than they are.

@Lizuka Honestly it’s pretty seamless. Just start playing the game with the same account you’re signed into with the app.